The impact of climate engagement: A field experiment

Florian Heeb and Julian Kölbel

No 437, SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE

Abstract: We report results from a pre-registered field experiment about the impact of index provider engagement on corporate climate policy. A randomly chosen group of 300 out of 1227 international companies received a letter from an index provider, encouraging the company to commit to setting a science-based climate target to remain included in its climate transition benchmark indices. After one year, we observed a significant effect: 21.0% of treated companies have committed, vs. 15.7% in the control group. This suggests that engagement by financial institutions can affect corporate policies when a feasible request is combined with a credible threat of exit.

Keywords: Shareholder Engagement; Field Experiment; Climate; ESG; Activism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 D62 G23 G34 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:safewp:308043

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4711873

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